Morgan Dahl

Morgan is 3 months old today

Weight: 11 lbs, 12 oz.

Things she can do…

• support her head very well, though not fully
• smile, laugh, and coo
• mimic faces and sounds
• hold things that you place in her hand (she is not yet reaching for toys)
• hold her head up a bit when on her tummy
• push her legs so she is ‘standing’ when on your lap
• suck her thumb
• follow movement across a room (watch one of us walking across the room)
• recognize our voices and turn toward them
• sit contentedly on Metro, watching the world go by, while we commute to and from daycare (woot!)
• sleep well (woot woot!)

Getting used to daycare

Morgan seems to be getting acclimated to her daycare.  She is napping well, eating well, and is much less fussy while there.  And her primary caregiver says she gets good smiles.  Good news all around!

Self-soothing (fancy language for she sucks her thumb)

Morgan started sucking her thumb about a week ago.  A couple of weeks ago, she started out generally slobbering all over her fist, then would suck whatever fingers managed to inadvertently make it into her mouth, and now reliably moves her thumb to her mouth to ‘self-sooth.’

Our pediatrician suggested that sucking her thumb to sooth herself can be better than a pacifer.  At her age, if she were using a pacifer she wouldn’t be able to get it back in her mouth if it fell out.  The likely outcome is that we’d have to get up multiple times in the night to put it back in her mouth.  She, however, can find her thumb, no problem.

I actually thought nothing of this skill, as I kind of thought all kids would suck their thumbs.  Talking to some of the other mothers at daycare today however, this seems not to be the case.  So I thought maybe it was worth a post…

Sleeping through the night…or not

Morgan skipped her 4 am feeding for 2 nights in a row, but was up again last night to eat at 4am.  So she hasn’t completely abandoned the nighttime feedings.  With it still being only week 2 of daycare, it is tough to know how much of her behavior these days is due to fatigue (which will hopefully abate) or ‘real’ change.

In good news, she is starting to nap well at daycare.  I suspect that makes everyone happy.  She is sleeping more (not so hard to care for a sleeping baby) and when awake, is better rested.  Yay for everyone!

A weekend with uncle John

Uncle John (Dahl) came to visit Morgan for the first time.

Though Morgan went to daycare as usual on Friday and Monday, weekend activities included her first trip to the zoo and her first trip to the local Minnesota Vikings fan club gathering for a Sunday afternoon game.  The crowd at the Vikings game loved her and she was having a good time until the fourth quarter when the Vikings started rolling and the crowd got pretty loud, leading Molly to bail outside with her.

Photo-rama

Some new acquisitions.

The changing seasons, Morgan growing out of 0-3m clothes, and the start of daycare have led to a small clothes-buying spree.

The playmat provides some nice cushioning against the hardwood floors, and is currently sitting under her activity mat.

Slept through the night

Morgan slept through without her usual 4am feeding last night for the first time ever.

It was a busy weekend, so we should have lots of posts and photos coming soon…

First week at daycare

We finished our first week at daycare. The past week was a ‘transition week,’ meaning she was there for 3 hours Mon, Tue, and Wed, and then 5 hours on Thu and Fri.  We were dropping her off late and picking her up early, so we haven’t really run through the process with the additional chaos of all the other parents around.  I’m sure it will be fine though.

They were having trouble getting her to take a bottle at the beginning of the week, though things seemed to be going better by Friday.  She’s not napping particularly well at daycare, but she’s never been great at napping at home during the day either. We’re commuting on Metro, which Morgan seems to tolerate reasonably well.

Clearly they do some things differently than we do, and so that takes some adjustment on her part.  But, other than being extremely tired, she seems to be doing fine.  The upcoming week we ratchet up to full-time care, so that will be interesting.

We don’t have, nor will there be, any pictures of her at daycare.  Safety precautions and all…

Personality / awareness

For anyone who hasn’t seen Morgan in a few weeks — likely anyone reading this — she’s really changed.

She’s becoming very engaged with the world, is newly entertained by just looking around, will visually track people, and will respond to facial expressions.

The taking her to lunch strategy is no longer hoping she stays asleep lest she cry or demand to be held; she contently sat through an entire lunch awake yesterday, just looking around.

We also discovered a fun game where I would frown and she would get really sad and noticeably upset, but then I’d smile and she’d cheer up and giggle.  We were able to go back and forth between the two about 3-4 times before Molly pointed out that intentionally making her sad might not be the best idea.

Daycare

Yesterday was Morgan’s first day of daycare.  It’s a slow transition week:

Mon-Wed 9:30a-12:30p
Thu-Fri 9:00a-3:30p

They couldn’t get her to eat anything yesterday; today they managed to get a 2oz bottle into her but complained that she wasn’t ever really latching on and drinking.  So, I went to pick her up today at 12:30p and showed them how I give her a bottle.  Fortunately, she latched right on, so hopefully they picked up some tips or quirks watching and will have better luck tomorrow.